References:
American Mathematical Society (AMS) (PDF)
ArXiv (19): Lehmer’s Problem, McKay’s Correspondence, and 2, 3, 7, 2002
Harvard
Florida State: 1997-2015
ICERM
MSRI
Publications: Topology Proceeding: Quotient Families of Mapping Classes, 2019
Scientific American, 2017

Second email: 17 October 2022 at 12:29 PM

Dear professor emerita Eriko Hironaka:

I was back on the ICERM page of listed speakers for the Exotic Geometric Structures conference and noticed you are listed and there is a link to your old FSU page:  https://www.math.fsu.edu/~hironaka/

My bad habit is to hit enter when the screen is black, just to re-activate everything. That ICERM page was the last page up before I left my desk and obviously the cursor just happened to be over your listing on that page. Quite circumstantially — https://www.math.fsu.edu/~hironaka/ — was presented to me, not ICERM’s page where I had left off.

Obviously I stopped to puzzle the serendipity of the moment and enjoyed the challenge! Given the Brown, ICERM, AMS, and Harvard connections, I was puzzled. 

Now, did you happen to take a look at my most simple gap created by five octahedrons? I wrestle with its meaning here. It all started in a high school geometry class where my nephew requested my help.  Of course, your comments are most welcomed.

Warm regards,

Bruce

PS. I believe there is a reason for everything. I have created a reference page to you and your work  — https://81018.com/hironaka/ — to remind me where I left off!  -BEC

First email: Wed, Sep 28, 11:10 PM

Dear Professor Emerita Eriko Hironaka:

I came back to my desk and there was your old homepage from FSU. I looked and wondered how it happened to be front and center on my desktop. I looked and saw the reference to the AMS and Brown; I immediately wondered  if you ever had a course with Phil Davis. He was from Lawrence; I was from Wilmington-Andover, a town away. Twenty-five percent of our family is of the Davis clan, but most-importantly Phil pushed me on the fundamentality of the sphere (over the tetrahedron) and I capitulated in 2012, especially when I learned about cubic-close packing of equal spheres and Aristotle’s gap about which the AMS Conant prize was awarded to Lagarias and Zong in 2015.

From your CV there are no papers about exotic geometric structure (at Brown ICERM conference of 2013), but just because you showed up unexpectedly, let me point you to a simple, unacknowledged basic geometry which makes it entirely esoteric: https://81018.com/15-1/

I hope this was a little escape from your daily work… serendipity can be fun!

Enjoy the wonderful autumn of New England. I’m a bit envious… but just for the next two weeks!

Best wishes,

Bruce